January 2008

January 30, 2008

I love arugula! That, combined with the fact that I am pregnant and should not be allowed to enter a grocery store alone, is the reason why I had three containers of arugula in my refrigerator this morning. (Along with leftover pizza, take-out vegetable beef soup, leftover cheesesticks, and jar upon jar of pickles...you get the picture) I swear, I am more dangerous with a credit card at a grocery store than my friend Emily is at an antique store! Rather than let all of that gorgeous arugula go bad in my fridge, I decided to use it up as quickly as possible by making this arugula pesto. I ate some of this batch with a steaming plate of spaghetti, but I have also served skewered shrimp brushed with arugula pesto at a cocktail party, and I think it would also make a lovely pasta salad tossed with farfalle, halved cherry tomatoes, and chunks of parmesan cheese. It is also good dolloped onto a nice hot bowl of vegetable soup. Or you could just dip your leftover pizza crust in it.

Toast the pine nuts over medium high heat in an ungreased small frying pan for about seven minutes, stirring occasionally, until they are beginning to turn golden brown. Put them in a blender or food processor with all of the other ingredients and whizz until smooth. Voila! Arugula Pesto!

Chad and I went to Umai for dinner recently, and we had a wonderful meal. Mine began with a bowl of curried apple soup, and I then became obsessed with making it at home. The soup at Umai was a delicate, almost sweet concoction that tasted a bit of apple cider. It was a perfect start to my dinner, but I craved something heartier when I aproached my spice cabinet at home. For this soup, I used a madras curry that packs a lot of heat. If your curry is not hot, that's fine. It's a matter of personal preference. If your curry is not hot and you still want to add heat, you can add 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper to this recipe to achieve it. It's 32 degrees in Memphis right now, and I can't think of a better way to defrost than to cozy up to a hot bowl of this spicy, hearty, healthy soup. Enjoy!

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Add the onion and celery and saute over medium heat until softened, about five minutes. Add the apples and potatoes and saute another three minutes. Season with the salt and pepper and the curry powder, and add the bay leaf and liquids. Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are tender, about ten minutes. Puree with a hand blender until the soup reaches the desired consistency- slightly thinner than baby food. Garnish with a generous little pile of shavings of parmigianno and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

January 07, 2008

Chad and I just returned from Peru on New Year's Day. We spent ten days touring beautiful ruins, travelling with insane cab drivers, and of course, eating everything in sight. We travelled with a group of friends and met up with some of their family. Luckily, the family likes to eat as much as we do, and the first adventure they had planned for us was a pachamanca.

A pachamanca is a meal traditional to the people of the central Andean mountains, and is usually prepared in an oven created from stones heated over a fire, topped with meat that is usually wrapped in banana leaves, and covered with grass and dirt and the hot stones to cook for about an hour and a half. In our case, the meal was prepared in permanent ovens similar in concept to the original stones, but made with cement. The word pachamanca actually means earthen oven.

We took a small bus to the restaurant called Mesa De Piedra, a drive that took about an hour from the Miraflores district in Lima, where we spent about half of our vacation. The drive there was fascinating and sad, as we saw Peruvians living in the most extreme poverty just before we arrived at the beautiful setting where we would spend our afternoon. Houses that were made of straw mats and sheets of corrugated metal were common sights, and the mountains surrounding us throughout the drive appeared to be huge mountains made of dust that hung in the air like smog. One has to wonder how easy it is to breathe when walking up and down the huge hills surrounding the little groups of shacks.

Mesa de Piedras (House of stone tables) only serves on Sundays. The feeling one gets when entering the compound of Mesa de Piedras is, first, one of relief ater the bumpy ride, and then one of awe and wonder. The setting, after all of that dust and dirt and poverty, is an impossibly beautiful little green valley. There are women selling honey and chiccha morada (a purple corn beverage) on the streets. The restaurant itself is completely outdoors and is surrounded by green grass and exotic flowering trees. We moved towards a huge granite slab surrounded by chairs, a few of which were already taken by friends of our Peruvian hosts, who had recommended this particular pachamanca and who had arrived armed with a bottle of Pisco for everyone to mix with sprite to make Chilcanos de Pisco.

We were served corn kernels deep-fried in pork fat to start. Like popcorn, but not puffy. Most of us ordered the pachamanca. The first dish that was presented was roast suckling pig, cooked on a spit and served with roasted yucca root. I do believe this is some of the best pork I have ever tasted. Next, the full pachamanca. A clay pot was presented for every two people, but each pot could have easily served four. The pots were filled with alpaca, the camelid that resides all over Peru and provides many a Peruvian with warmth in the form of sweaters during the rainy season; Haba beans (lima beans), tamales, choclo (Peruvian white corn), potatoes, sweet potatoes, chicken, and herbs and seasonings. The corn in Peru is amazing: we had it again and again and always it was the white corn with kernels three times as big as what we are accustomed to here in the US. The potatoes are delicious, too. They actually have their own earthy,sweet, creamy flavor which is much more concentrated than the flavor of our Idahoes. I am not a big fan of alpaca, as it is a little tough and gamey for my taste, but the peruvians do like their alpaca. We were served alpaca throughout the trip and in many different forms.

We finished the meal with picarones, little deep-fried squash doughnuts served with a syrup made from solidified molasses. This was by far my favorite part of the meal and one of my favorite Peruvian traditions.

Sadly, we had to leave the Pachamanca, the live traditional music, the costumed Peruvian dancers, and the beautiful setting to head back to Lima and continue on with the rest of our trip. More on that to come...